The Bora Laskin Law Library has recently made a significant contribution to historical legal research and to the preservation of historical legal material.

The library has made the Ontario Regulations from 1944 onwards available for inclusion in the Internet Archives. Although recent regulations (from 2000) have been available electronic format on e-laws, this marks first time that the whole set of Regulations has been made freely available in electronic format.

The Internet Archive is an non-profit organization mandated to create a free digital library of Internet sites in the form of the WayBackMachine, as well as other digital “cultural artifacts” including, moving images, live music, audio, texts, software and educational resources in digital form.

Good News for researchers and practitioners. As of November 30, 2008, Statutes and Regulations from the Ontario e-Laws website are now considered official sources of law. Rather than being compelled to locate the print version of a statute and all its related amending statutes for presentation in court, researchers can now locate consolidated up-to-date versions of each statute easily and quickly via the e-Laws website.

Legislation Act, 2006

ONTARIO REGULATION 413/08

OFFICIAL COPY OF LAW FROM e-LAWS WEBSITE

1. For the purposes of clause 41 (1) (b) of the Act, the following are the prescribed forms or formats of a copy of a source law or a consolidated law accessed from the e-Laws website:

1. An on-screen display of a copy viewed on or downloaded from the e-Laws website in HTML format or Microsoft Word format.

2. A print-out of a copy viewed on or downloaded from the e-Laws website in HTML format or Microsoft Word format. O. Reg. 413/08, s. 1.